Jean Esme Oregon Cooke RA (18 February 1927 – 6 August 2008) was an English painter of still lifes, landscapes, portraits and figures. She was a lecturer at the Royal Academy and regularly exhibited her works, including the summer Royal Academy exhibitions. She was commissioned to make portraits by Lincoln College and St Hilda's College, Oxford. Her works are in the National Gallery, Tate and the Royal Academy collections. In the early years of her marriage, she signed her works Jean Bratby.
Early life
Jean Esme Oregon Cooke was born on 18 February 1927 in South London to Arthur Oregon Cooke and his wife. Arthur owned a shop in Blackheath, London where he sold hardware supplies and groceries. Until she was about years old, Cooke spent a lot of time in her father's shop. Her mother saw little value in education and kept her out of school until then. Her mother had an artistic spirit, creating "beautiful colours to decorate the walls by subtly mixing odd touches of paint." As a young girl she drew, painted and modeled figures and heads in plasticine. She attended Blackheath High School.
Early adulthood
Cooke began her art studies in 1943 at the Central School of Arts and Crafts. She studied life drawing under Bernard Meninsky, textile design, and illustration at the Central School until 1945. Cooke then studied sculpture at Goldsmiths College and pottery at Camberwell College of Arts. Interested in becoming a teacher, she enrolled in the teacher education course at Goldsmiths, which she completed in 1950.
Initially, Cooke was most interested in pursuing sculpture, partly because oils were expensive and clay was free at the college. One of her works won a prize, but after suffering a biking accident where she had dislocated her thumb, she worked in pottery. In 1950 she established a pottery workshop in Sussex.
John Bratby, a Royal College of Art painter, and Cooke began a tempestuous dating relationship. Bratby, afraid that she might leave him, locked her in his room once during their courtship. In April 1953 they were married and she took his last name. Later that year she entered the Royal College's post graduate program. Cooke's interest in painting grew under the tutelage of Ruskin Spear, Rodrigo Moynihan, and Carel Weight.
In 1964 she had her first solo exhibition at Leicester Galleries. She developed a following, including Bethel Solomons and Brinsley Ford who collected her regularly exhibited works. Bratby did not achieve the recognition that his wife received and he was upset by it, which made their relationship increasingly difficult. He often painted over or "slashed" her works and restricted her painting time to three morning hours. Bratby had affairs and was physically abusive and cruel. He was said, though, to have had an "enlivening, inspiring effect" on her artistically.
Career
In 1964 she began teaching students to paint at the Royal College. The following year the Royal Academy made her an associate member and in 1972 she was made a full member. She lectured at the college until 1974. During the summers she exhibited her works at the Royal Academy exhibition. The seascape at her cottage and the landscape surrounding her Edwardian mansion featured in her paintings: "cherry trees in full bloom, long grass filled with buttercups and blue-flowering lungwort, or the dark evergreens lit by the house windows at night. Doves were favourite models and appeared frequently." She made self-portraits, paintings of her husband; and portraits. She was commissioned by St Hilda's College, Oxford to paint its principal, Mary Bennett and was hired by Lincoln College to make portraits of Walter Oakeshott and Egon Wellesz. In the early 1980s she painted a full-length portrait of her next-door neighbor, the baroque cellist Richard Webb. Her works reflected sensitivity, beauty, and insight - made with a "subtle, understated, individual sense of colour." Piet Mondrian was one of her favourite artists. Her work has been compared to Gwen John and Paula Modersohn-Becker.